Country after country is dropping the outdated requirement that visitors must have taken a COVID test to enter the country. These testing mandates might have made sense at the start of the pandemic, but they make zero sense now with mild Omicron as the dominant strain.
Switzerland and Great Britain are the latest to drop the demand.
Travel bans haven’t made sense for a while. The U.S. imposed bans on several African countries after the Omicron variant was discovered but it turns out it was already in the U.S. and spreading before the ban was announced.
The travel blog View From The Wing notes that the politicians won’t acknowledge this because “lifting them creates a problem of optics. There can’t be a recognition that these policies have failed, except by a new administration that hasn’t already owned them.” Now that even the Brits have acknowledged that travel testing serves no useful purpose we will do the same, perhaps first for vaccinated citizens in order to continue to appear responsible.